Wednesday is the day in 2024 when the Earth will be closest to the Sun, the so-called perihelion, which coincides with the planet’s highest orbital speed, reaching 30.3 kilometers per second, according to the North American website EarthSky.
On this date, the Earth will be around 3% closer to the Sun, just over 147 million kilometers, that is, about five million kilometers less than at aphelion, when the distance is greatest, at the beginning of July. The average distance is about 150 million kilometers.
The Earth describes an elliptical orbit of 930 kilometers and the orbital speed is lower the greater the distance from the Sun and greater the shorter the distance.
Thus, the current speed is about a kilometer per second faster than when the planet is furthest from the solar system’s central star, EarthSky says.
Source: TSF
